Opala is Still Garbage

I’m looking at garbage (opala in Hawaiian, the language that makes everything sound beautiful). The yard is piled with ironwood trees, remnants of bougainvillea, logs from the alpesia, piles of prunings and Norfolk pine needles. We have to get rid of them. I favor tossing them over the bank and letting them compost. Bart wants to keep the bank free for future landscaping. We will haul them to the transfer station starting Monday. The great thing about Hawaii is that you can dump things for free. There are lots of conveniently located transfer stations. When you combine 7,000,000 visitors with the local population, the Pacific Fleet, the 25th Light Infantry Division, etc. Oahu has quite a management problem when it comes to garbage. They have lots of it—1.5 million tons every year. They burn about 40% of it in a power plant which actually produces 7% of Oahu’s electrical power. They also have an aggressive recycling program. But garbage is always controversial even when it has a pretty Hawaiian name. Opala is still garbage and you’ve got to do something with it. Even when you burn it and recycle it there’s a lot left over. The Waimanalo Gulch Landfill, located on the west side of the island is filling up. The nearby residents and the Ko Olina resort hate it. But the City Council just reversed itself and voted to extend the use of that landfill. There have also been discussions about shipping excess garbage to Oregon. Rogue Pundit, a retired environmental engineer has the details on this.  It’s strange to think that someday the garbage we create here might follow us back to Oregon. Hawaii doesn’t create many exports except for pineapple and cans of mac nuts. Those barges that haul everything over here go back empty. So, it wouldn’t cost that much to send the garbage to Oregon. Hawaiian politicians aren’t sure they want to take the risk of ever being held hostage over garbage. Politicians don’t like to give up control, even of garbage. Of course, mainland environmental groups have objections to Hawaii’s garbage piling up in Oregon landfills. Nobody’s happy. We don’t like garbage but we have to do something with it. Here’s what I’m going to do: from now on I’m going to take out the opala.